Once upon a time, Facebook was this place for people with ties to educational institutions to get together, stay in contact and so on and so forth. This was widely regarded as a good thing, and Facebook was rather successful. With this success, the powers that be at Facebook came to the realization that they had something that they could market and make money with, but that they were not making everything they could by limiting it, and so they opened it up for all the world to come and create accounts. From high school (or younger) kids to grandparents who are older than the idea of college, whole families to creepy, single guys who aren’t allowed within several hundred yards of families. One and all converged on Facebook, despite not being able to make their pages look nearly so ugly as they could on Myspace.

This isn’t about bringing back those good old days, however. I neither have any pull with those in charge of Facebook, nor the inclination to change it seeing as I never did finish college myself. But as you well know, this blog is sending my child to college and as such, writing about Facebook here makes Facebook about college again.

Of course the main thrust here is in raising money for the aforementioned sending of child to college, with an emphasis on non-traditional means, without any shame. There are some things I absolutely will not do, however, because being unashamed and being a criminal are very different things. Today I was reminded of one of those things I will not engage in when someone attempted (Via Facebook!) to con me out of money by posing as a friend whose Facebook account this person had hacked. - May all my readers be wary of unusual requests for money!

What makes this most amusing to me is that only minutes before this ‘friend’ contacted me on Facebook, I had been sitting with another friend from work when he had received a phonecall from this mutual friend and discussed going out to eat tonight. (They also invited me to join them.) Knowing full well, then, I decided to have some fun when approached by this ‘friend’ online. The following is a log of that conversation:

Her:

Hey
You there?

Me:

I am.

Her:

Good
How are you doing?

Me:

Doing well, you?
I hear you’re headed to mexican tonight.

Her:

I’m in a huge mess as we speak

Me:

I highly recommend against such.

Her:

I’m stuck in London as we speak
I was mugged at gun point last night

Me:

*blinks*

Her:

My wallet was stolen
You there

Me:

ya

Her:

I need your help to get back homme

Me:

Yeah? Okay! I’ll have my jet there tomorrow night. Got a phone # I can call you at to give you the gate info and such when I get that arranged?

Her:

are you kidding me?

Me:

Huh? No.
I figured that’s why you were asking me for help.
You didn’t know I bought that jet last year?

Her:

I need you to loan me some cash
I’m dead serious

Me:

I’ll have money wired to the airport for you. What number can I call you at to give you the information to arrange pickup?
Will 5k be enough?
Do you need that in british pounds or euros or what?

Her:

I know you’re kidding me

Me:

Huh?
<censored>. That’s why I never travel to London.
Place has really gone to <censored> since Blaire got in.
So what’s the number?

Her:

which number?

Me:

I’ve got my assistant on the line waiting to get things together.
A number I can call you at to get this all arranged.
Did you lose your passport? I’ll give a call to the embassy for you.

Her:

why were you kidding me?

Me:

What do you mean?
I figure that’s why you got in touch with me. You knew I could take care of it all.

Her:

yes

Me:

Oh, hell… Where do you want to be flown to? My assistant said something about making sure to get the right amount of fuel at the London airport.
Nevermind, I told her to just fill it up.
Geez, it’s hard to find good help these days.
She’s worried about the cost of the fuel in England.
hahaha
So, a phone number?
Better yet, where are you? I’ll send an associate out to pick you up.
I think Bill is in London this week.
You remember Bill?

… and then they were gone.

You know, I really do have to hand it to the person who was playing this game. In the past I have received numerous lures of this and other sorts where the person’s ability to write simple English was absolutely terrible. I wonder if this person attended college?

Some of you may be thinking to yourselves, “Hey, just what is that link down at the bottom that says ‘Stumble It!’”? I dare say that’s a fantastic question to ask, and I will try to answer it as well as I might that you and I both can benefit.

The ‘Stumble It!’ link pertains to an enjoyable social network called StumbleUpon. The point of StumbleUpon is to provide a way for people to surf the web in a laid back, recreational manner. In joining, a new user chooses from a variety of interests and installs the StumbleUpon toolbar in their web browser. Once the sign up is complete and the toolbar is installed, you will find a button at the far left of the toolbar labeled ‘Stumble!’. Clicking this button will take you to a web page that some other StumbleUpon user has labeled in such a way as to fit in with one of the interests you had chosen in your sign up. Neat, isn’t it?

The next two buttons you find in the toolbar are a thumbs up (I like it!) button and a thumbs down button (if you don’t like a page) and these are used to let other users know what you thought of a web page. If you happen to vote, whether thumbs up or thumbs down, for a web page that has not been found by another StumbleUpon user before you will be allowed to choose a category for the page and write a brief review. A couple categories that have been used for the No Shame College Fund have included education and humor.

Now, those of you who are exceptionally bright are starting to tie together just why it is that these links are at the bottom of the articles on this site. For those of you who didn’t bring me an apple and aren’t sitting in the desks right in front of mine, the reason is simple. I would like more people to find the No Shame College Fund Project, and if people, like you, take the time to click on the ‘Stumble It!’ button, write a review, choose some good categories and sign up for StumbleUpon, it will cause the site to be seen by more StumbleUpon users who, hopefully, will also give the site a thumbs up and maybe even a review.

So, if you like something you find here and think other people would too, please do ‘Stumble It!’. That said, please do not just give me thumbs up and reviews on every page of my site. While I certainly appreciate the show of kindness, this simply isn’t what StumbleUpon is for, and doing so would waste a good bit of your time and a good bit of other Stumblers time as they keep showing up at this site and find less and less that interests them. Please be respectful and only hit that link if you really think what you read was good and that others would be interested.

Right at the start I mentioned that StumbleUpon is a social network. In the spirit of social networking, feel free to check out my profile and become a fan! Fans are kind of like friends or contacts or whatever it’s called in other social networking systems, except that it’s a one way thing. If I see a fan that really gets into the StumbleUpon thing and I like what he or she is stumbling I will be sure to become a fan too, which then makes us friends. Um. Just in the social networking sense, though. You can’t come borrow my lawn mower or anything like that.

I hope this helps my readers find the joy and lack of productivity that StumbleUpon has brought to my life.

Yikes! Somehow I managed to add Aeris Reborn to my blog roll as a donor, but I’ll be darned if I can find a post that mentions her kind $2 contribution to the fund! How horrible. I’m so very sorry, Aeris!

Well, things are really picking up steam. I had yet another donation from a guy in Kosciusko, MS who donated $5 today! With luck I will hear back from him soon so I can get a link set up for him in the blog roll. For now, all I can do is give him a 200,000:1 return by saying thanks a million for the $5!

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve added Google Adsense advertisements to this site, and those among you with a lick of sense (I expect that to be at least 99% of you) probably realize that those are there as another way for me to make some money for the No Shame College Fund. In fact, according to my statistics, some of you have even clicked on those ads. Thanks! I sincerely hope whatever site you visited was useful to you.

This brings up a topic that’s important to me. While you all know that I am shamelessly asking for whatever you’ve got to give, but my lack of shame shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of ethics. I am, quite honestly, an extremely honest man who believes strongly in playing fair. In that spirit, I respectfully ask that my visitors click on my ads only if they are of interest to you.

There are plenty of blogs out there that espouse a concept of using advertisements as a sort of tip jar. That if a person likes what they’ve read, it would be great if they would click on an ad so that writer could get a little something. I am of the opinion that this is fraud, plain and simple, and bad for everyone. Nobody is trying to advertise on my site for the express purpose of handing me money.

So what I want from you, my readers, is really very simple. If you read something you appreciate, and you figure I deserve to have some money, go ahead and hit that donate button up at the top left of the site. I’m not even asking you to hit that button and give me $100.00 or anything like that. If you give me a dollar, half a dollar even, you’re probably doing just as well by me as if you hit one of those links and really, if you can’t afford to do that, maybe you should reconsider whether you can afford to spend time on the internet, let alone the cost of having internet.

If there is an ad that truly interests you, even just a little, by all means get outta here and go check it out, but please don’t click on them otherwise. This is not a tip jar.